Borg Ranking System - Adaptation

posted on June 27th, 2011, 5:16 am

Just thought of an idea for a ranking up system for Borg. How about the Borg rank up by gaining adapt points from taking enemy weapons fire. Every time a borg ship is hit by a weapons fire they gain 1 adapt point. When a borg ship gains so many adapt points they rank up a level and the next rank requires more adapt points than the last to gain in rank. Obviously the number of points for a rank up will have to be just right for balancing reasons and the number per rank up will have to be bigger for stronger ships. A small different color bar could be used underneath the health bars or in the status area of Borg ships to see the progress of adaptation.

posted on June 27th, 2011, 5:40 am

I'm in full support of Borg Adaptation of this kind.

A while ago I discussed some ideas for this. Don't really remember them though.

I think I had it based on races though. You gain so much adaptation based on the race you take impact from.

So, in a two vs two for multiplayer, if you are facing say roms and feds, their would be separate adaptations for each race. There wouldnt be any overlap. Let's say you destroyed a rom fleet of 10 ships early on in the game, and gained x amount of experience, and later you faced a fleet of 12 fed ships, you would start at zero adaptation for fed ships. You need to adapt based on the race, not say against beam, pulse, or torps in general. Also, can't just adapt universally to small ships, destroyers, all battleships etc. (or, if we go that way, you can) However, within a race, I could understand adapting to certain things universally. I don't see why engagements with klingons would help borg be resistant against the dominion weaponry... at least, not by necessity.

I would agree, should accumulate quite slowly for smaller ships, and faster for larger ships. your right, whatever balances. Earlier, I do remember saying separate adaptation for pulse, beam, and torps. This isn't really necessary though. Shouldn't be able to adapt at all for starbases maybe?

Conversely, I think this could allow for added tech for the other races. Let's say the borg reach some stage in the game where the borg have reached 90% adaptation, this allows them a sort of reduced damage intake. So, for one race, feds for example, once they reach 90% they reduce incoming damage by 5%. The federation ships then realize the borg are adapting. This sets of some alert thing, and allows all constructors an icon for research station "place name here". The construction ship researches the hypothetical station and all. Then it can build it. So this allows the borg ships to collect more adaptation. Then the station researches something like oscilate phaser frequency, or whatever the phrase is. This ability is then transfered to all ships, but not small ships maybe?

Anyways, so lets say at 90% adaptation, they get 5% reduction. At 100% adaptation they gain 25% reduced damage. After you research the ability, the borg take 12.5 percent reduced damage. Because of those long engagements, and the natural inclination  of borg adaptation, they retain a certain level of resistance.

Perhaps though, they get 50% reduction from specified ships, ie small ships. sabers, all pulse ships, or whatever is interesting. Maybe calculate a way for remembering which ships allowd the borg to adapt most, so lets say your building lots of monsoons and excelsiors that give borg 59% of their adaptation, the borg then get added resistance against these ships.

Also, would this be something researched for borg, or, avatar specific. Should be some catch for them to use it. Or do we just add this in to the entire borg faction universally. Do they start adapting right from the beginning of the game?

Definitely like the idea of adaptation though. Could be an avatar idea. Borg Adaptation.

posted on June 27th, 2011, 5:57 am

Lol .  godsvoice you really love making a wall of text, don't you?


    I am definitely in favor of a Borg ranking system.  I would love to see a Borg rankup system of some kind - whether it be an individual ship-based thing or a race thing.  If they gained a new resource ( a la CC or Supply or blah blah) that lets them purchase upgrades or each ship ranks up to gain new adaptations - I am in favor .  That would give the Borg a more dynamic approach to things, I feel

posted on June 27th, 2011, 6:05 am

lol 

my fingers enjoy the exercise. i just let em rip. I type until I stop thinking of things to say.

posted on June 27th, 2011, 6:38 am

This certainly sounds interesting. At the very least, the experience bar would be a great addition to the rest of the game. Knowing how much longer until a ship will likely be promoted is a great idea.

posted on June 27th, 2011, 7:23 am

my concern for this is this:

what happens when you pit 50 ships against a borg cube.. the cube has 100 hps and gains 1 xp per hit.  that means that the cube guaranteed the borg 100 xp regardless.  ship after ship takes weapons fire.  where would it end?  wheres the loophole for strategy?  would the borg just keep adapting till they are all but invincible?  or would there be a cap (which seems silly too).  i like the idea of adaption, but i see it more like:

with each ship assimilated, the borg gain xp, the larger the ship, the greater the xp.  xp gained provides perks and unlocks as it progresses (a special holding beam, for example).  losing a borg ship would cause xp to be lost, representing the mental loss/efficiency of the drones taken out.  if enough xp is lost, then the unlocks will lock back out, until enough is gained back to unlock again.  not a sure-fire system, but it could work.  just needs some adjustments i am too tired to think of now. lol

posted on June 27th, 2011, 8:15 am

sounds nice. High energy slicer only for borg with experience? fine.

But maybe the assimilation of ships should give a greater boni then taking damage, and there would have to be a cap to damage reduction to prevent something like super-scubes, lol

an experience progress bar itself would be nice too, but i see myself eating my ass for seeing a kvort getting a kill, nearly ranking up, and getting a big kill after that only to see how much that big kill only adds 1 xp for the rankup while the other xp goes to nothing... right now one can't see it, so no frustration over that Unless of course our devs would let a ship keep the xp not used for rankup..

posted on June 27th, 2011, 11:25 am

I lkike that idea very much.  It sounds interesting and would suit to the borg.

However when I think at a 1v1 Situation Romulans vs Borg for example it is already very very hard for a romulan to survive the first Borg waves. If they now adapt it could make it even worse balance like. And that goes basically for every race in 1v1 facing a borg oponent.

To implelemt that would be one hell of work and it would require entire new balance testing etc. But ye maybe some day in a distant future they can implrement that feature.

[godsvoice]

posted on June 27th, 2011, 7:59 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on June 27th, 2011, 8:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It doesn't have to be one ship gives one point, to a total of 100 points to rank up.

I think it should be based entirely on weapons fired against the borg. If a borg gets hit 150 times by similar weapons of a given race, they are sure going to be adapting to it. It could be receive .01 per shot fired. Furthermore, it could be broken down by pulse, beam, and torpedo, by ship size, and by ship class.

You could also give a ship a maximum number of adaptation points given. If I build an intrepid, that provides .01 increase per shot, the borg can only adapt to that vessel for maximum of .05, which means five of that ships shots go towards in the rank up bar, and then that particular ship is no longer useful for further adaptation. Unless say it is assimilated. Assimilated ships give a .02 increase.

And even after adaptation is complete, does it have to mean they are completely immune to a race's weaponry? Maybe at best, all the borg can achieved is x amound of decreased damage from a race.

We could set it up in stages. The borg get 5 adaptation icons per race. The first one when achieved after 100 points with .01 per shot, receives 2.5% reduced damage. Once that is accomplished we move to second icon, which receives .01 per shot, and requires 150 points, and allows for 5% reduction. And so on. Devs can change the numbers in any way to make it work.

And, we can still nerf it with a counter from the races like I mentioned earlier. Each race is able to do tech up against the borg to increase weapon output etc.

We can also choose how hard it is for the borg to develop the adaptation. Maybe we make it another research ability that costs like 5 slots. That comes at the cost of other abilities. Although, not so nice if it is for an avatar. If that is the case, should be easier.

I still think there is plenty of potential too explore this idea base on shots fired per race. We just make it that it needs 1000 or 10 000 shots to be fired in order for it to matter. and such. whatever the devs like

edit: so for the earlier point, we could make it that small pulsed base ships only give .005 or whatever. But large battleships give .03 Open ended.

posted on June 27th, 2011, 10:25 pm

what about something similar to the dominion prototypes, if the borg assimilate a brel or e-2 for eg , then they would get a small buff against a brel or e-2, but if there opponent is quick and micro's during the battle and destroyes the brel or e-2 the borg would then lose there advantage against ships of that class that they just assimilated.


or perhaps another way to do it would be if they assimilate a brel or e-2 they then return that ship to there conduction matrix for eg and a beam kinda like the holding beam will lock on the the brel or e-2 and a research  will become available eg brel Adaptation and take a decient amount of time to research. after research is completed all borg ships get a small buff against the brel class the same process could be applied to all ships. a way to counter this would be to try and micro transport on to the ship the borg are trying to take or if they have it in a holding beam ....open fire on it  .......or wait till its at the  conduction matrix and destroy it there before  they can complete the research.

posted on June 28th, 2011, 2:10 am

my concern for this is this:

what happens when you pit 50 ships against a borg cube.. the cube has 100 hps and gains 1 xp per hit.  that means that the cube guaranteed the borg 100 xp regardless.  ship after ship takes weapons fire.  where would it end?  wheres the loophole for strategy?  would the borg just keep adapting till they are all but invincible?  or would there be a cap (which seems silly too). 

Just a note here.....but if you're sending 50 ships against a cube.....unless they're all ventures and newtons!    In my experience, most games end before cubes are even under construction.....and I have won a few.

[Bigmachk]

posted on June 28th, 2011, 2:29 am

Last edited by Bigmachk on June 28th, 2011, 2:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Like I said the numbers for a rank up would have to be tested and changed to make it balanced. Obviously a Cube will rank up alot slower as thats a endgame ship thats designed to fight fleets of ships.

Just example numbers:

You gain 1 adapt point (AP) per weapon hit on you.
These points act as exp on a ship so if you want to rank up a ship they have to take damage from enemy ships.
Once you get to the fourth rank you can choose whether it can be a veteran and it could have the same 25 point vet limit same as the other races. Rank ups can be similar to the normal system gaining in a boost of stats and maybe unlocking rank up abilitys and passives.

                                        First Rank    Second Rank    Third Rank    Fourth Rank    Veteran Rank Cost
Probe                                   50 AP            75 AP             100 AP          125 AP                5 VP
Scoutcube                            75 AP            100 AP           125 AP          150 AP                6 VP
Dodecahedron                      100 AP          125 AP           150 AP          175 AP                7 VP
Adaptor                               125 AP           150 AP           175 AP          200 AP                8 VP  
Assimulator                          150 AP           175 AP           200 AP          225 AP                9 VP
Sphere                                 300 AP           350 AP           400 AP          450 AP               10 VP
Pyramid                                400 AP           450 AP           500 AP          550 AP               12 VP
Diamond                                 ?                      ?                   ?                  ?                    15 VP
Cube                                     750 AP           1000 AP         1250 AP        1500 AP             20 VP

So according to these numbers for a Cube to become a Veteran it would need to be hit 4500 times with weapons fire.

I've left the diamond numbers out as im unsure what numbers to give them, as im unsure how much damage they can take. Another idea is a veteran Cube becomes the Command Cube if it ever gets into the game .

I reckon this system is more suited to the borg and would make the player micro manage his ships more if he wants them to rank up.

posted on June 28th, 2011, 3:31 am

Oh, I missed the part about individual ship rank ups.

I don't really want invdividual borg rank up system.

I thought this was just the entire borg fleet slowly adapting to weapons fire. So like, with all ships gaining AP points, at some point the entire collective would gain resistance and reduced damage. Instead of ship by ship basis.

I dunno anymore.

see where the discussion goes with it.

posted on June 28th, 2011, 3:55 am

Oh, I missed the part about individual ship rank ups.

I don't really want invdividual borg rank up system.

I thought this was just the entire borg fleet slowly adapting to weapons fire. So like, with all ships gaining AP points, at some point the entire collective would gain resistance and reduced damage. Instead of ship by ship basis.

I dunno anymore.

see where the discussion goes with it.

If the whole Borg fleet gained bonuses all at once then it would be unbalanced towards the other races. This way rewards players for micro managing their ships.

posted on June 28th, 2011, 4:20 am

I really like this idea! However needs to be refined and balanced out so that borg aren't too strong.......as it is, they are tough!